


Finding Psyche

by gingerfic



Series: An Alphabet of Samcedes Stories [6]
Category: Glee
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Cupid - Freeform, F/M, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5026345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerfic/pseuds/gingerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is falling for Mercedes, but it’s complicated. Like, really complicated. <br/>Title refers to the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Psyche

**Author's Note:**

> beta by voyagehk
> 
> Warning for an age gap, but there's magic involved and it's not quite what it seems.   
> As for the writing style here… It’s not my norm, but it just came out this way. It’s fic. We don’t ask too many questions.

Sam looked seventeen, but he wasn't. He was almost closer to one hundred and seventeen (though he wasn't that either).  The problem--if you wanted to call it that--was that he was a demi-god. If you got technical he was sort of a demi-demi-demi-god, but you can just say demi-god. It's what Sam always said. 

So Sam looked seventeen, but he wasn't, and he looked like an ordinary human, but he wasn't. What he was, was a cupid. Now you have probably heard of Cupid, and you may think of him as one young man, or maybe a baby, with a white loincloth and a quiver of love arrows. The truth is more complicated. (They always simplify things for stories because they think children can't understand complicated things, but you and I know that is balderdash. Young people are far smarter than most older people give them credit for, and you are definitely smart enough to understand the truth about cupids.)

Cupids are actually a family line. The role is passed from parent to child, with both males and females fulfilling the calling. This means that at any given time there are many cupids scattered around the globe. (After all, you can't fall in love without one, so aren't you glad there are enough to go around?!) At the age of seventeen, each cupid enters an apprenticeship with an older cupid and spends three years learning how things are done. Then they spend seventy four additional years (for a total of seventy seven) serving as a cupid before resuming their own life, marrying, and raising the next generation of cupids. During their apprenticeship and service they are frozen in time and do not age, thus they live two lifetimes, one as a cupid and one that is far more normal. 

The arrow thing is not quite accurate either. The thing is that they have to touch the person with their magic, but there aren't really rules about how it has to be done. Some cupids favor rainbows or sparkles, others fling drops of water or rays of light. Sam favored song. 

Cupids can fall in love of course. Many of them don't bother: they find a distant relative who is ready to continue the family tree and then they do so under a contractual arrangement. Ironically, many cupids are cynical about love, on account of seeing so many people fall back out of love after they've fallen in. 

But some cupids are idealists and dreamers, and Sam was one of these. He had thirteen years left of his calling before he would be ready to find his own partner, but he looked forward to it eagerly. Every time he hummed notes in someone's ear, or whispered a melody into their head, or sang the perfect song through the radio, someone fell in love, and that someone always seemed so happy. Love looked pretty fantastic to Sam, and he couldn't wait to try it. 

You can probably guess what happened to Sam next. He was in a high school--so many people fall in love in those places that you must have realized that there would be cupids there, right?! In any case, Sam had joined the glee club to try to help the members there sort out their messy love triangles and pentagons and just fall in love with one person already, and that was where he met  _ her _ . 

Sam wasn't in love with her of course. Remember, love only happens with a cupid's magic, and as you may have guessed, a cupid cannot give the love magic to her or himself. But when Sam looked at Mercedes Jones he saw everything he wanted in a woman. She was kind, talented, smart, and beautiful. Someday, this was the kind of woman he wanted to marry. 

Now I know you're probably thinking that there's a hole in this story, because Mercedes wasn't a cupid, so how could he marry her and carry on the family profession? It is true that Mercedes wasn't a cupid and never could be one, but I'm afraid I left out a detail before, which is that cupids, once their seventy seven years are fulfilled, finish their lives aging as normal humans. And if one chooses to marry a human, then their children have only a half and half chance of growing up to be cupids, so they don't do it very often, but they can. 

But Sam only looked seventeen. Mercedes actually  _ was _ seventeen. And Sam had thirteen years before he would be free to consider a partner for himself, cupid  _ or _ human. But she was sort of fantastic, and Sam was very fond of her. So fond, in fact, that he told his cousin.

I should explain at this point that, once a cupid has finished their apprenticeship, they don’t spend much time with other cupids. There is simply too much work to do and hardly enough cupids to go around. But Sam, as you may recall, was six decades in, so he was one of the more experienced cupids around, and he was mentoring his cousin Patricia as she began her cupidity. Every day he spent several hours either having Patricia follow him, or following her as she learned how to be a cupid, and then every evening they would discuss the day’s events and what could be learned from them. And it was in one of those evening discussions that the subject of Mercedes came up.

It actually started with Patricia, who commented that he had found love matches for most of the glee club, and that maybe he should quit the club and go try to find matches for some of the nerds in the robotics club.

“Mercedes doesn’t have anyone,” Sam said pointedly.

“Well not everyone gets someone,” Patricia argued. She was a full foot shorter than he was, but her attitude more than made up for her lack of stature. “We have to do the best we can for as many people as we can, but there are too many people in the world for us to spend too much time worrying over just one.”

“I don’t want to give up on her though,” he insisted.

“You’ve been in that glee club all year,” Patricia countered. “Maybe she’s asexual, or the right one for her simply isn’t around here. You did check her orientation, right? You haven’t been pointing her at the wrong gender?”

“No, I haven’t,” Sam huffed. “Remember I’m the one who is mentoring you, I don’t make mistakes like that.”

“...anymore,” Patricia teased. “You don’t make mistakes like that  _ anymore _ .”

_ “ That was one time and it was fifty six years ago! ”  _

“Still.” Patricia looked smug.

“You’ll make mistakes too. Just wait.” Sam informed her. 

“Ok, so maybe she’s anti-social and doesn’t want a relationship.”

Sam glared at his cousin and informed her in no uncertain terms that Mercedes was  _ not _ anti-social and  _ not _ anti-relationship. Then he started explaining how wonderful Mercedes was, and that’s when Patricia caught on.

“You like her.”

Of course Sam tried to deny it at first--given the inappropriateness of the whole situation--but eventually Patricia forced it out of him. Sam, being a professional cupid, made Patricia promise that she would forget it. Patricia, being a busybody, made the promise but didn’t keep it. She had never intended to.

Patricia spent several months contemplating the situation and watching Sam moon over Mercedes before she made up her mind to do something about it. And what she decided to do was to touch Mercedes.

Lest you be confused, and think that Patricia had taken it upon herself to find Mercedes a human partner, I will be very specific and say that that was not the case. No, Patricia had decided to touch Mercedes so that she would fall in love with Sam. She rationalized to herself that it would make things simpler for both of them. Sam may not have given a label to his feelings about Mercedes, but Patricia was in the love business. Sam, for all that he was extremely professional, was not always very perceptive about what love actually was. But Patricia knew it when she saw it, so she thought it was a good idea to make it mutual.

When Sam found out he was furious.

“I thought it would make you happy,” Patricia said. “I know you’re mad at me right now, but give it time, you’ll be happier later.”

“Do you realize what this means, Patricia?” he yelled. “I have more than twelve more years of this before I am free to be with her. She will be thirty! It’s not fair to her.”

Patricia put her hands on her hips and tipped her chin up so she could look Sam in the eye. “Why don’t you ask her how she feels about it?”

Sam didn’t have an answer for that. So, eventually, he just asked Mercedes.

The answer he got--as you may have guessed--surprised him.

\-----

The next twelve and a half years seemed to pass more slowly for Sam than the first sixty four had. But cupids are committed to their task, and Sam was certainly not a quitter. 

He had explained to Mercedes about being a cupid, and she had taken it remarkably well. Now every year he would check in with her, as per their agreement, and ask her the same question.

“Do you still want to wait for me?”

Every year she gave him the same answer.

“Don’t be stupid, Sam. Of course I do.”

\-----

At the end of his duties, Sam made his way to Mercedes for the final time, and asked a question that was not quite the same.

“Do you still want me?”

Mercedes smiled at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “For the last decade I’ve had the freedom to go anywhere and do anything I wanted. I’ve worked outrageous hours without guilt because I haven’t had to worry about anyone at home being lonely in my absence. And I haven’t worried about being lonely myself, because I knew that in a few years you would be coming for me. Now I have three albums, a grammy, and a very old cat. I own a house in LA and a vacation home in Milan. I have all of the  things  I want.” She reached out and took his hands, pulling him close as she whispered the same answer for the thirteenth time. “Don’t be stupid, Sam. Of course I want you.”

\-----

From outside the window Patricia watched them pull into one another’s arms, smiled in satisfaction, and then turned abruptly and strode away. Touching Mercedes had been easy. Getting to Sam had been harder, partly because she’d had to wait so long. She knew he would never give up his responsibilities until his time was fully filled, so she had waited until the last day before putting her magic to him.

In spite of seventy-seven years working on the inside, and the fact that he never forgot who he had been, Sam never actually realized that a cupid had touched him. 

Neither did Mercedes. 

Because, as everyone knows, that’s how cupids work.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!


End file.
